Ohio Brew Week 2014 – A few Suggestions

Phew…what a trip, another great year of Ohio Brew Week wrapped up yesterday. As always we had a wicked time visiting Athens and the many establishments hosting Ohio craft beers. We saw several new Ohio craft brewers this year and more offerings from previous year participants. As we wrap up our Ohio Brew Week notes and thoughts we wanted to do something we’ve not done before and point out a few things that could improve the overall experience.

Starting the list. 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week 2014

1. The beer list change

In previous years (the last 5 anyway) the list has always included each location that will have available Brew Week beers. Under each location a rough list of what beers they will offer and box to check off each one. This list has never been perfect, some beers don’t make it, or some come different times of the week and may not be available when you visit. I have seem some breweries listed prior years but when you stop by you are told they don’t have certain ones but are carrying others.

Ok, not such a big deal since there are so many beers available one expects the lists to be somewhat off as taps blow or deliveries come in late.Secondly, the nice thing about the old list style was you could look at the bar you visited, check off the beers you had or write in ones that originally were not on the list.

This new list was in alphabetical order by beer with the bar it was located at named at the end of the description. We feel this seemed less intuitive and made it more time consuming to try and go through. On top of this when you found beer not listed you had to write down the location and the beer instead of just writing in the beer under the bar. Again… minor nitpicks but we kinda hope they go back to the old list style next year.

(side note: The beers were listed on the website by Bar and not alphabetical order like the menu. This is what we used towards the end to get a better grasp on beer location)

2. The varying of beer prices

Varying beer prices from bar to bar is just how it works, we get it, this is something that isn’t a huge deal as this applies everywhere beer is sold. The issue we have is one place will charge fifty cents to a dollar for the same beer another bar charges two dollars or more. We would like to see perhaps more uniform prices for the beers on average but alas …. probably a pipe dream.

3. More uniform spread of breweries and beers

There were several new breweries at brew week this year like Actual Brewing, Seventh Son, and North High from Columbus and Yellow Springs Brewery from Yellow Springs to name a few. The sad part is if you visit to early in the week you wouldn’t have been able to try Yellow Springs Brewery since they were yet to be tapped. Now we know that not all beers can be tapped by all breweries at once, that is just crazy! We would like to see one or two beers from each available at all times. A lot of the locations do it this way so depending on the day you may get X breweries stout and the next X breweries IPA. Some places though go balls deep and tap all of one breweries beers until they blow then move on to the next brewery.

These really are just thoughts we had as the week went on and ways we saw to improve the over all experience. The people who put on Ohio Brew Week do a fantastic job and we are always excited for the next one!

Keep an eye out for the the Ohio Brew Week highlights including our top picks later this week.